Writing, even at its best, is not an act of ethereal genius. It’s nature, which includes teenagers on school buses, snowy forests, and heartbreak, that contains genius. Sometimes our minds get out of the way and let our senses reveal how funny and strange it all is. Handler’s gentle advice can be summarized as: write that moment down. We then rearrange these “glimmers,” as the writer Pam Houston calls them, until we feel we are doing right by the moment. And that’s it. The humility of And Then? And Then? What Else?—”Chapter 12: Everything I Write is Dumb.”—will, I think, comfort generations of writers, inspire them to let go of ambition and instead search out a more collective dream, a loyalty to the world. What a lovely gift. 10
Handler, Daniel. And Then? And Then? What Else?. WW Norton & Company, 2024. Reviewed January 18, 2026.